News briefs

Crimestoppers

Penn has been awarded a two-year Violence Against Women Act grant designed to increase support for victims, the reporting of crimes and arrests and adjudication of crimes against women. Joined by Drexel University and University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, Penn Women’s Center will work with Philadelphia police, the district attorney’s office, and local women’s groups to fulfill the goals of this grant, known as the Campus-Community Consortium. Goals of the grant include fortifying a campus-wide response to violence against women, providing proper training for campus police and internal judicial boards, and educating new students.

Safer kids

New research from Richard J. Gelles, dean of the School of Social Work, shows that contrary to predictions, incidence of child abuse did not rise with the implementation of welfare reform. Gelles analyzed data from several national surveys on child abuse and neglect, child fatalities and the number of children in foster care before and after welfare reform, and concluded that maltreatment of children actually decreased after the 1996 passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.

Traffic report

New traffic patterns are in effect in the vicinity of 38th Street, University and Baltimore avenues as work on the Life Sciences building gets under way. The sidewalk on the east side of University Avenue is closed south of Hamilton Walk, and northbound traffic on University is restricted to one lane through the area. Other changes are in the offing as work to reconfigure the intersection begins early next year. Visit www.facilities.upenn.edu/whatsNew/emgnews.php3 regularly for updates.

Penn Current Express

Quoted Recently

“As we know from the research, the performance of a large firm is due primarily to things outside the control of the top executive. … We call that luck. Executives freely admit this—when they encounter bad luck.”

—J. Scott Armstrong, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School, on how executives can influence a company’s value. Limited research on the topic has mostly found that broader market forces often have a bigger impact on a company’s success than an executive’s actions. (The New York Times, Feb. 7, 2015)